Fourth Leg of the Relay Race: Meet the South Carolina State Broadband Director

Jim Stritzinger, Director of the South Carolina Broadband Office, likes “to think of the work we’re doing as an Olympic relay race.” The first leg, he said, was the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The second leg was federal funding like the US Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect Loan and Grant Program and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The third leg was the American Rescue Plan Act. And the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program is the fourth and final leg. Continuing his relay race analogy, Stritzinger said, “While we have been executing and running the third leg of the race, we’ve also been planning for BEAD.” Because the ARPA funds had to be fully deployed by the end of 2024, that was the state’s front-burner issue even as they prepared for the BEAD Program. Stritzinger said South Carolina was happy to take the BEAD process slowly. By taking one set of funding at a time, South Carolina has dramatically reduced its number of locations eligible for broadband. “It’s tough to do the exact math,” said Stritzinger, “but if I had to wager, in July 2021 we probably had north of 300,000 [underserved and unserved] locations in the state.” Today, as the state prepares to launch its BEAD application portal, that number is down to about 29,000.